Apparatus of layered picture coding, apparatus of picture decoding, methods of picture decoding, apparatus of recording for digital broadcasting signal, and apparatus of picture and audio decoding

• US 6,801,574 B2
• Filed: 08/02/2001
• Issued: 10/05/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 09/03/1997
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Matsushita Electric Industrial Company Limited (Panasonic Holdings Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Matsushita Electric Industrial Company Limited (Panasonic Holdings Corporation)
• Inventors: Takeuchi, Seiichi, Wake, Kazuhiro, Fujiwara, Yuji, Nishino, Masakazu
• Primary Examiner(s): Vo, Tung T.
• Application Number:
  US09/919,833
• Publication Number:
  US 20010048719A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,160 Days
• Field of Search: H04/N.712, H04/B.166, 375/240.01, 375/240.09, 375/240.11, 375/240.14, 375/240.15, 375/240.16, 375/240.17, 375/240.18, 375/240.19, 375/240.28, 375/240.29, 375/240.26, 375/240.12, 375/240.2, 348/384.1, 348/390.1, 348/394.1, 348/396.1, 348/409.1, 348/415.1, 348/416.1, 382/232, 382/233, 382/234
• US Class Current: 375/240.15
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/124 Quantisation
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/132 Sampling, masking or truncation of coding units, e.g. adaptive resampling, frame skipping, frame interpolation or high-frequency transform coefficient masking
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/137 Motion inside a coding unit, e.g. average field, frame or block difference
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/14 Coding unit complexity, e.g. amount of activity or edge presence estimation H04N19/146 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/146 Data rate or code amount at the encoder output
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/152 by measuring the fullness of the transmission buffer
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/176 the region being a block, e.g. a macroblock
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/18 the unit being a set of transform coefficients
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/187 the unit being a scalable video layer
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/30 using hierarchical techniques, e.g. scalability H04N19/63 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/44 Decoders specially adapted therefor, e.g. video decoders which are asymmetric with respect to the encoder
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/61 in combination with predictive coding
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/23418 involving operations for analysing video streams, e.g. detecting features or characteristics television picture signal circuitry for scene change detection H04N5/147; filtering for image enhancement G06T5/00; methods or arrangements for recognising scenes G06V20/00; arrangements characterised by components specially adapted for monitoring, identification or recognition of video in broadcast systems H04H60/59
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/234327 by decomposing into layers, e.g. base layer and one or more enhancement layers
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/234363 by altering the spatial resolution, e.g. for clients with a lower screen resolution
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/2368 Multiplexing of audio and video streams
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/2662 Controlling the complexity of the video stream, e.g. by scaling the resolution or bitrate of the video stream based on the client capabilities
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4331 Caching operations, e.g. of an advertisement for later insertion during playback
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4341 Demultiplexing of audio and video streams

Abstract

A video signal layering-encoding system has at least either a frequency distribution unit to judge a frequency distribution in an input video signal or a motion judgment unit to judge the motion of an input video signal. With this, encoding quantity control according to the characteristics of the input video signal can be performed between layers. Also, with selection of encode modes and sharing of a motion vector, the encoded data of a bidirectionally predicted frame can be reduced and the encoding efficiency of a high resolution signal can be increased.

Claims

1. An apparatus for layering and encoding a video signal on the basis of spatial resolution, comprising:

first resolution transformation means to generate a second video signal with low resolution from a first video signal with high resolution which is an input video signal;

first encoding means to encode said second video signal;

decoding means to decode the encoded second video signal;

second resolution transformation means to generate a third video signal with the same resolution as said first video signal from the decoded video signal of said second video signal;

second encoding means to encode said first video signal, based on a time axis correlation of the first video signal and based on said third video signal as a predicted video signal;

frequency distribution measuring means to measure a frequency distribution of said first video signal; and

encoding quantity control means to control an encoding rate at which said second video signal is encoded by said first encoding means and an encoding rate at which said first video signal is encoded by said second encoding means, based on the measured frequency distribution.